The recent tunnel tragedy in the Big Dig has unleashed a firestorm of finger-pointing on Beacon Hill and in the Boston media. From our
governor on down, the political cognoscienti are seeking
political cover -- and perhaps political advantage -- from the mess.
Against this background, gubernatorial candidate Deval Patrick does something seemingly unprecedented in Massachusetts politics: in an important editorial in the Boston Globe, he makes a reasonable suggestion.
Patrick identifies the problem as one of governance:
The failure of the Big Dig, in other words, is a failure of politics-as-usual. It is the failure of leaders to do the jobs they were elected to do. The Big Dig culture of Beacon Hill allowed corners to be cut and oversight to be lax. The culture is a failure to take the role of government seriously.
This is not a particularly unique, or partisan, argument. That the Big Dig is a fiasco of near-epic scale, and that part of that failure is due to poor government oversight, is more or less taken for granted in the Bay State. In fact, in the editorial just below the fold, BoGlob's resident winger Jeff Jacoby makes the same point, not-so-deftly using the tragedy to trash his favored Democratic punching bags:
It would be going too far to link [the late Thomas "Tip"] O'Neill to the incompetent workmanship and negligent oversight that led to the collapse of a 3-ton ceiling panel in the Interstate 90 connector just as the Del Valles drove beneath it last week. [Of course, Jacoby proceeds to do just that... -looty] But the culture that he embodied is still solidly in place.
Patrick, however, goes beyond identifying as prime culprit "a culture" in the abstract, he suggests a solution, or rather, a list of reforms: reforming the Turnpike authority, holding contractors accountable, demanding more transparancy. The most important, however, is this: Appoint an independent special inspector general.
the state needs a truly independent professional to do [a review of the structural integrity of the Big Dig]. Political contributions from Big Dig contractors and personal and political relationships with Bechtel, the project manager, leave current officials with the appearance of conflicts of interest, even as the public's confidence needs to be restored. The state needs a professional with engineering and project accounting experience to determine what can make the tunnels safe, to assure the public that the necessary work has been done, and to examine why the project has so grossly exceeded its budget.
This is exactly what the citizens of Massachusetts have needed for a long time: the official recognition that the Big Dig is broken, and not only structurally. And that it takes two to dance the tango of corruption -- government and business. The contracting process needs to re-examined by an independent, non-partisan authority. One with engineering experience, and independence from the go-along-to-get-along politicking of Beacon Hill.
It is also noteworthy, in this regard, that Patrick connects the failures of government with respect to the Big Dig, to other past and potential problems in Massachusetts:
It's time the rest of us took action, too, and demanded the kind of political leadership that acts because it should, and not because tragedy makes it unavoidable to do so. Without that, we will face other collapses -- if not in our tunnels, then in the quality of our schools, in our healthcare system, and throughout our government.
Patrick's eloquent, practical editorial stands out against the vague fault-finding of the Massachusetts political establishment. It shows a practical reformist mind at work, one that, in looty's fond hopes, belongs to the next governor of the Commonwealth.